


i hope you're waiting at the end

by fridaygrimm



Series: some kind of clear unspoken chemistry [3]
Category: Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: M/M, Pining, i don't even know what i'm doing any more you guys, not really pining, resolved pining?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 02:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11591439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fridaygrimm/pseuds/fridaygrimm
Summary: He’s buoyed through the whole trip by a kind of restless, manic energy and a series of burning questions. Every time he sees another stupid photo go up he’s suddenly too aware of Tommy. Looking at the stupid face he pulls trying not to laugh outside Heller’s office makes every single fading mark on his body light up.





	i hope you're waiting at the end

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god, this should have been done WEEKS ago. But I got very stressed about the timeline and then I got sick and then I just didn't want to. So um, this is technically the end of tommyjon week? Sorry it's so late?
> 
> As always please be chill and do not alert anyone ever to the work of this fandom.

The week passes in a haze of blissful, wilful ignorance and domesticity and Lovett wakes up the following Tuesday, warm and pleasantly sore, to the sight of Tommy sitting on the floor of his bedroom pulling on running shoes. He must have some kind of audible reaction because Tommy looks up at him. Judging by the fond smile he gets the noise is an embarrassing one.

‘I’m going to take Pundit for a run,’ Tommy says, shifting onto his knees and leaning in for a kiss. He tastes like toothpaste and doesn’t seem appropriately grossed out by Lovett’s morning breath.

‘Go easy on her,’ Lovett says, stretching under the sheet, eyes squeezing shut so he doesn’t have to look at Tommy’s smile. ‘If you give my dog a heart attack I’ll never forgive you.’ Tommy laughs and Lovett opens his eyes again to watch his ass as he heads for the door.

He listens to Pundit’s excited barking and Tommy’s baby talk followed by the slam of the door. In the sudden still of the house he takes stock. In the hush of the house with the looming knowledge that whatever this is will probably snap tomorrow when Favs gets back he feels like shit. It’s what he expected but he’s surprised by how shit he feels. They’ve never talked about DC, they don’t have to talk about this either. He’s fine with that.

He throws himself out of bed and puts music on, pumping it through all the speakers in the house to break the silence and the impending panic that comes with it. Tommy’s coming back. He’s only been back to his own place once, jogging over with Pundit to pick up some clothes. The rest of the time he’s made do with borrowed things and the stockpile of largely indistinguishable Crooked Media merch. Lovett retaliated by stealing Tommy’s Sleeping with Giants shirt and wearing it once before squirrelling it away against a time when Tommy’s no longer inexplicably living in his house.

Lovett pads downstairs to crash around his kitchen. He goes to put the coffeemaker on, gets distracted by the sparse contents of his fridge. Then he perches on a stool at the bench to check twitter and is still there when Tommy and Pundit return in a burst of laughter and an excited clatter of claws.

‘Don’t do that,’ Tommy say reprovingly, plucking Lovett’s phone out of his hands and replacing it with Pundit’s leash. She props her front paws on Lovett’s shins, panting up at him adoringly while he unclips her and Tommy bears his phone away to the other side of the room, turning the music down on the way.

‘I was reading that,’ Lovett says without rancour, propping his chin on his hand to take in the delight of a slightly sweaty Tommy in his kitchen, noticing the paper bag in his hand for the first time. ‘What’s in the bag?’ Tommy shakes it at him before handing it over and turning his attention to the coffeemaker. ‘Breakfast burritos, Tommy Vietor you do care!’ Tommy flashes him a grin over one perfectly sculpted and tightly clad shoulder, totally at odds with the fake cheer Lovett’s injected into his voice.

He swallows the nauseating mix of hope flaring in his chest and curdled anxiety in his stomach, turning his attention to tearing open the bag for maximum accessibility to the food inside.

He thought he’d forgotten what living with Tommy was like, that he’d painted the memories rosier than reality could ever be.The one bright spot untarnished at the end of his time in DC. But it actually feels like something’s clicked back into place. Tommy in his kitchen, efficiently wiping down the coffee machine before bringing him a steaming mug. It’s more than companionable, sitting beside him at the bench, reading the headlines of the endless stream of news coming into Tommy’s inbox over his shoulder.

It turns out Tommy is home.

 

Favs calls halfway through the morning, which feels like a cruel theft of time. Lovett stares at the phone screen for a long minute before picking up and putting him on speaker.

‘Jonathan! You don’t call, you don’t write,’ he starts, barely gets a bark of a laugh before Jon drops into his business voice.

‘I’m stopping in DC on the way back,’ he says. ‘You guys should fly out and join me.’ Lovett glances at Tommy, who’s looking at the phone with lazer focus that says he’s synthesising information.

‘The protests?’ he asks after a beat. There’s another moment where Favs processes they’re together before he goes on.

‘There’s this human chain thing,’ Favs says. ‘I want to join it.’ Tommy looks back down at his laptop and starts typing.

‘I have to go to Colorado,’ Lovett says. Tommy falls still again.

‘Okay, well then just me and Tommy I guess.’ Tommy starts typing again, more slowly.

‘Tommy and me,’ Lovett corrects him automatically, following up with, ‘and you call yourself a speechwriter.’ Favs laughs and Emily says something in the background.

‘Okay,’ Favs says after a minute. Lovett can hear the smile in his voice. ‘Tommy, text me your flight details. See if Tanya can come, we can probably get some people to talk to us.’ Emily says something else. ‘Oh, and bring me a repeal and go fuck yourself tee.’

‘Okay,’ Tommy says, sounding distant. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Then Favs is gone.

They sit in silence for a long moment, Lovett watching as Tommy books flights and messages Tanya, sends Dan a message in the group chat so he’s in the loop too.

When he runs out of things to do he looks up and Lovett’s caught off guard staring at him. He clears his throat and tears his gaze away.

‘You should go pack,’ he says, reaching out for the remote to turn off the television where the news has been on mute for the last hour.

‘Yeah,’ Tommy says quietly. Lovett doesn’t look up from the array of buttons on his remote as Tommy closes his laptop and puts it aside. He doesn’t even know what most of these do.

‘I don’t even know what-’ he starts to say, anything to break the silence, when Tommy shuts him up by leaning across and kissing him. A little more of his resolve to let this fizzle quietly evaporates and with only the slightest encouragement he’s sliding into Tommy’s lap. 

‘Sorry,’ he mutters when they part for breath, as Tommy’s hands slide down to cup his ass. 

He’s ready to make a joke when Tommy mutters ‘don’t be’ and pulls him closer, head tipped back against the couch and eyes heavily lidded. He’s so fucking pretty, lips wet and cheeks just a little pink, that Lovett can’t help leaning in again.

They stay like that, making out like teenagers, until Lovett’s heart feels full to bursting. Tommy finally draws away reluctantly after a few failed attempts, reaching up to cup Lovett’s cheek as if holding him back. He lets his eyes fall closed, turns just a little into Tommy’s fucking enormous palm, tries to catch his breath.

‘We need to pack,’ Tommy says softly, thumb sweeping the delicate skin next to Lovett’s eye.

‘Yeah,’ he agrees. He slides to his feet carefully, like the thundering in his chest might knock him off his feet. Tommy stands too, impossibly tall, leaning down to kiss him once more before stepping back. Lovett watches him until he disappears in the hallway, lets the click of the door reverberate through him.

 

He’s almost settled his heart rate back into an acceptable rhythm by the time he’s sitting at his gate at the airport. He thinks about trying one of the meditations from the headspace app Tommy loaded on his phone when, as if summoned by a thought, it buzzes with a message instead.

_hey, can i ask you something?_ He frowns at the screen, anxiety ticking up his heartrate.

_too late._ he shoots back. Then _because you just did_. He watches the three dots, unable to even pretend he wants to look at another app right now.

_shut up. would you like it if i asked you not to touch yourself until i can touch you?_

He licks his lips, glances around like that’s not the quickest way to get everyone looking at your screen. He thinks about playing dumb. In the end he types out _would you like it?_ Then immediately follows it up with _you realise the nsa is reading everything we type._

The next message comes through in signal rather than whatsapp. _yes._ then _if they want to know how desperate you get i guess they should have to work harder for it._ He breathes slowly in and out, gets another message _will you do it?_

He has to close his eyes, giving in for a few glorious moments to the urge to imagine Tommy’s little pink cheeked blush and serious, thoughtful frown as he figures out exactly the right wording. How long has he been thinking about this? It happened once before, when Tommy was going out of the country for a few days and made a quip on his way out the door. But this is premeditated.

_yeah_ he sends back when he’s got himself back under control. Casual, as if there was any chance he was going to do anything but agree. He’s still feeling a little overheated when boarding is called for his flight and he fidgets in his seat, disappointed when he lands and there are no messages from Tommy waiting. 

He’s buoyed through the whole trip by a kind of restless, manic energy and a series of burning questions. Every time he sees another stupid photo go up he’s suddenly too aware of Tommy. Looking at the stupid face he pulls trying not to laugh outside Heller’s office makes every single fading mark on his body light up. 

It’s insane. He probably wouldn’t have even noticed that he doesn’t have time to jerk off in the scant few days he’s away, every time he’s alone between the interviews and the shows he falls asleep. But there’s a gnawing awareness, a memory waiting for him every time he closes his eyes. He wonders if Tommy is thinking about it too, anticipating, or if he’s switched back over into professional mode out in DC. Every time his phone buzzes he jerks like he’s been stung but it’s mostly just Emily asking where Pundit is. Tommy only shows up on social media.

 

He has no idea what he’s expecting when the cab from the airport drops him off at the Favreau house. What he gets is almost normality. An enthusiastic greeting from Leo and a guided tour of everything they bought in Italy. He gets a present from Emily and an empty wine bottle from Jon, who looks at him with a laugh in his eyes until he works out it’s the one Tommy and the band sent them. He explodes into a rant, has them doubled over in stitches, which only encourages him into wilder gesticulating until Tommy has to rescue the bottle to stop it from being smashed.

It feels good, to have them back in the house, but there’s an undercurrent of anticipation.

 

It’s exacerbated by the way he catches Tommy looking at him sometimes. When he first walks in and Tommy’s bent over a laptop with Jon, when Emily gets there for the first hug, when he’s mid-rant it almost stops him in his tracks, when Tommy gets up to go the bathroom in anticipation of leaving.

And Jon, nosy, annoying, observant best-friend-only-friend Jon, notices.

‘Is this a thing?’ he asks, as he’s clearing up the last of the plates to take into the kitchen where Emily is gathering Pundit’s things.

‘Is what a thing?’ Lovett asks, obnoxiously obtuse and refusing to help with this conversation or even look up from his phone.

‘You and Tommy, are you, I don’t know. Is this like DC or is Tommy going to be your boyfriend now?’ 

He freezes for a second, feels Favs see it, risks a glance to find Favs standing there with his head titled to the side like a big, concerned puppy. He pointedly turns his attention back to his phone, lounging in the doorway while he waits.

‘Fuck off Jon, don’t be so heteronormative.’ 

He’s saved from further discussion when Tommy step up behind him. He wonders how much Tommy heard as he leans back just a little, encouraged when Tommy rests a hand on his hip. His thumb brushes up under the hem of Lovett’s t-shirt and he’s abruptly got a whole different reason to be beyond ready to leave.

Favs walks them to the door and Emily meets them there. Tommy has to take back his hand for a round of goodbye hugs and Favs manages to mutter ‘I’m happy for you’ before he lets Lovett go, which is just fucking heinous. 

And then they’re out in the warm evening air. Tommy’s ended up carrying Lovett’s bag and Lovett’s hands are uncomfortably free. They fall into step on the brief walk back to Lovett’s front gate where he pauses.

‘Well,’ Lovett says. Tommy raises an eyebrow at him. ‘Aren’t you going back to your sad, dogless house now?’ he asks. He’s teasing, he’s mostly sure. There’s almost no truth to the squirming fear in his throat that Tommy will leave. It must fall flat anyway because he looks up to find Tommy watching him in the streetlight with a serious expression.

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Tommy says quietly. ‘There’s a perfectly good dogless house right here.’

‘Well maybe you should.’ It comes out harder than he expected, forced out past the lump in his throat. ‘Jon thinks we’re,’ he shakes his head sharply and Tommy steps closer, shifting the backpack off his shoulder and putting one hand on the back of Lovett’s neck.

‘What do you want me to do, Jon?’ Tommy asks, really gentle, thumb rubbing along his hairline.

‘Stay,’ Lovett says immediately, no thought involved. Like the word was cued up to trip off his tongue.

‘Okay,’ Tommy says, and smiles at him like it’s that simple. He squeezes once and takes his hand back, shifts his grip on the bag. As they walk up the path Lovett feels like he’s on the edge of something. He feels exposed, hyper aware of Tommy behind him as he unlocks the door to his empty house.

He leads Tommy up the stairs and into the bedroom, watches him set the bag down carefully in the half-light. He’s searching for something to say when Tommy’s suddenly right there in front of him.

Tommy steps in, presses him back against the wall and leans in before he can get his breath back. One hand’s back on his neck again, holding him there a second before Tommy’s kissing him. It’s a soft thing, raw and overwhelming and Lovett finds his hands knotted in Tommy’s shirt, scrabbling for better purchase. It feels like too much. Like there are things he has to communicate right now, only he doesn’t know what they are or how he would do it. He’s abruptly aware of how wound up he is, of what Tommy’s done to him.

‘Tommy,’ he whines as soon as Tommy pulls away. He gets a momentary flash of that grin and Tommy’s hands under his shirt, on his skin, which make everything else seem secondary. He pulls at Tommy’s shirt, determined to get it off. Tommy, ever obliging, lets go of him momentarily to skim it off. He drops it to the floor while Lovett stares at him.

‘Pin up calendars,’ he mutters. Tommy pushes a hand through his hair and looks at him. ‘Just you and Favreau alternating for every month.’ Tommy grins at him again, more bashful this time. It shifts towards something else as he reaches for Lovett’s shirt. He has to quash the momentary urge to hold onto it but he lets Tommy peel it off and add it to the pile on the floor.

‘I don’t want Favs on my calendar,’ Tommy says, running his hands down Lovett’s bare back, fingertips skimming his waistband, making him shiver.

‘Keeping a twelve month calendar of yourself isn’t a great look,’ he manages, even though his voice is coming out breathy. Tommy pulls back a little and he swallows a whine.

‘Jon,’ Tommy says, managing to sound amused and completely done joking around at the same time. ‘Take off your pants and get on the bed.’

Lovett can’t swallow the groan that wrings out of him, hands already off Tommy and working on his jeans. Tommy steps back to let him away from the wall but he doesn’t go far, shadowing him to the bed. He takes the jeans from Lovett’s hands before he can drop them on the floor, tossing them towards the clothes basket.

He’s got a quip lined up and ready for that but it’s gone the second he turns to face Tommy, who takes advantage of his open mouth to kiss him as he pushes him down onto the bed.

‘Were you good for me?’ Tommy asks with a smile in his voice, looming over him all broad shoulders and shadows. 

‘What the fuck kind of porn are you watching?’ Lovett asks, trying to sound disgusted and giving the game away completely when Tommy gets a hand on him and he shudders up against the touch.

‘I’ve been thinking about the last time we did this,’ Tommy murmurs, pulling back enough to watch his face as he ghosts his fingers over the twitching skin of Lovett’s abdomen, down to his thigh. He tries to hold Tommy’s gaze, resist the urge to squirm as Tommy’s featherlight touch and the want in his eyes threaten to lay him bare. ‘I didn’t get to fuck you last time, but I really wanted to.’ Every breath feels cavernous, his skin too tight as Tommy’s gaze drops away, sweeping down his body like another touch.

‘What’re you waiting for?’ he gets out when Tommy doesn’t seem inclined to keep talking or stop touching him like that, thighs and hips and waist and chest. Tommy looks back up at him, lips parted and eyes dark and Lovett suddenly wonders if Tommy’s jerked off at all this week.

‘Can I fuck you Jon?’ he asks, in the soft silence textured by their breathing.

‘God,’ he has to close his eyes, breathe for a second. ‘Yes, fuck, Tommy.’ He swallows, opens them again, leans up to kiss him with them wide open. ‘Please,’ he mumbles against Tommy’s mouth, his voice cracking.

Tommy knows where the lube is now, apparently replenished the supply of condoms at some point because last Lovett remembers they were out. They move together through a familiar routine, everything heightened by the feverish nature of the want that’s swamping them both.

Lovett ends up on his knees, shoulders a little hunched, thighs shaking where Tommy’s kneeling behind him, pressing in and in and in. He’s vaguely aware of the sounds he’s making, verging dangerously close to a sob when Tommy leans down against his back, presses an open-mouthed kiss between his shoulderblades.

The rhythm is sloppy at best, Tommy’s control snapping back into place every time he pushes Lovett close to the edge before slowly slipping away again. Finally his hand slides down to touch his dick, the firm curl of his fingers all Lovett really needs to shake them both to pieces.

They sink to the bed slowly and untangle themselves in fits and starts. Lovett still feels jittery, exposed, but Tommy curls around him like he can feel it, kisses him back down to earth.

He’s finally sleepy and lax when Tommy pulls away, prompting only the smallest flutter of anxiety against his ribcage.

‘I’ll be back in a second,’ Tommy promises softly. He opens his eyes to watch Tommy cross the room in the filtered streetlight, gets caught watching him come back and defiantly refuses to drop his gaze. He lets Tommy clean him up, mostly so he can watch him walk across the room naked again to add the cloth to the washing basket.

When Tommy picks up the discarded jeans and then unzips his backpack from the trip like he’s going to empty that out too Lovett whines. Tommy glances at him, almost startled.

‘Come back to bed.’ There’s just a second of hesitation, then Tommy drops the bag back by the door and comes back over. Lovett holds up the covers but refuses to move back, laying determined claim to at least half the bed by lying directly in the middle.

‘You’re a monster,’ Tommy tells him fondly, sliding an arm around his waist.

‘Yeah,’ he agrees sleepily, already closing his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> As always I am on tumblr at fridaygrimm, where I'm a multifandom mess but extremely delighted to discuss these fucking guys with anyone who wants!


End file.
